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P. J. O'Rourke

P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

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Famous P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

“.......the poor of the world cannot be made rich by redistribution of wealth. Poverty can't be eliminated by punishing people who've escaped poverty, taking their money and giving it as a reward to people who have failed to escape. Economic leveling doesn't work. Whether we call it Marxism, Progressive Reform, or Clintonomics, the result is the same slide into the stygian pit. Communists worship Satan; socialists think perdition is a good system run by bad men; and liberals want us to go to hell because it's warm there in the winter.”

PeopleThinkingMenWorldWantGivingMadeRunningWealthPoorResultsPovertyHellRichEconomicWorshipEconomicsRewardsWinterWarmReformSatanProgressiveCommunistWant UMarxismPitsSlidesGo To HellBad ManPerditionRedistribution Of Wealth
Book:All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty
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“Iraq's invasion of Kuwait is a case of bad men doing wrong things for wicked reasons. This is the full-sized or standard purebred evil and is easily recognized even by moral neophytes. Other malignities-drugs in America, famine in Africa and everything in the Middle East-are more complex. When combating those evils people sometimes have trouble deciding whom to shoot.”

PeopleMenSometimesReasonAmericaEvilMoralHistoryCasesTroubleMiddleHumourDrugStandardsComplexesIraqEastWickedMiddle EastInvasionWrong ThingsFamineBad ManKuwait
Book:Give War a Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind's Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice, and Alcohol-Free Beer
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“The people I see on bicycles look like organic-gardening zealots who advocate federal regulation of bedtime and want American foreign policy to be dictated by UNICEF. These people should be confined.”

PeopleWantShouldLooksModernPolicyForeign PolicyGardeningRegulationModern LifeConfinedBicycleBedtimeZealotUnicefAmerican Foreign Policy
Book:Republican Party Reptile: The Confessions, Adventures, Essays and (Other) Outrages of . . .
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“Maybe it's understandable what a history of failures America's foreign policy has been. We are, after all, a country full of people who came to America to get away from foreigners. Any prolonged examination of the U.S. government reveals foreign policy to be America's miniature schnauzer -- a noisy but small and useless part of the national household.”

PeopleHas BeensCountryGovernmentAmericaPolicyUselessGet AwayForeign PolicyHouseholdExaminationForeignersNoisyMiniaturesSchnauzers
Book:PARLIAMENT OF WHORES A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government
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“Everything on a boat has a different name than it would have if it weren't on a boat. Either this is ancient seafaring tradition or it's how people who mess around with boats try to impress the rest of us who actually finished college.”

PeopleIfsTryingDifferentNamesCollegeTraditionAncientFinishedBoatMessImpressDifferent Names
Book:Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks,
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“Government usually doesn't work. It doesn't work because it is political. People who are wise, good, smart, skillful, or hardworking don't need politics, they have jobs. The difference between the political process and an honest life is the difference between parading around waving picket signs while hollering catcalls in front of the White House and getting up in the morning to go make a living.”

PeopleNeedsGovernmentJobsPoliticalLife IsHouseProcessDifferencesWhiteMorningWiseHonestFrontsSmartWorking ItWhite HouseSkillfulHardworkingGood Smart
Book:All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty
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“Remember, FDA employees are serious about fear. We pay these people to panic about an iota of rodent hair in our chili, even when the recipe calls for it. FDA employees are first-class agonizers, world champions at losing sleep. When Meryl Streep got hysterical about Alar, they actually checked the apples instead of Meryl's head.”

PeopleWorldFirstsRememberSleepPayClassSeriousHairLosingChampionApplesEmployeePanicRecipesFirst ClassHystericalFdaWorld ChampionsRodentsChili
Book:All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty
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“Political systems must love poverty-they produce so much of it. Poor people make easier targets for a demagogue. No Mao or even Jiang Zemin is likely to arise on the New York Stock Exchange floor. And politicians in democracies benefit from destitution, too. The US has had a broad range of poverty programs for 30 years. Those programs have failed. Millions of people are still poor. And those people vote for politicians who favor keeping the poverty programs in place. There's a conspiracy theory in there somewhere.”

PeopleYearsStillsPoliticalPoorPovertyMillionsDemocracyNew YorkProduceTheoryPoliticianEasierBenefitsProgramVoteFavorsAriseRangeTargetBroadsConspiracyPoor PeoplePolitical SystemsConspiracy TheoryMaoStock ExchangeNew York StockNew York Stock Exchange
Book:Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics
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“Then there was communism's weak-tea sister, socialism. Socialists maintained that we shouldn't take all the money away from all the people since all the people don't have money. We should take all the money away from only the people who make money. Then, when we run out of that, we could take more money from the people who...hey, wait! Where'd you people go? What do you mean you're "tax exiles in Monaco?"”

PeopleShouldMeanRunningWaitingTaxesWeakSocialismHeyCommunismTeaMaking MoneyMore MoneyExileMonaco
Book:The C.E.O. of the Sofa
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“This going on and on about how terrible a carbon-based economy is, these people are full of crap. They don't know what they're talking about. Their motives are not necessarily good just because they say they are being good. It's peace, love, and understanding. To which I can just say, "Shut up." Human liberty, rule of law, and free markets fix this stuff. It isn't necessary to go around being the Mia Farrow of the ecosphere.”

PeopleKnowsHumansI CanLawStuffUnderstandingTalkingLibertyEconomyTerribleBe GoodMotiveCrapShut UpCarbonFree MarketRule Of LawPeace LoveMia
Author:P. J. O'Rourke
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“I'd known the people at Rolling Stone for a while. I'd gone to them with a piece I'd done on Beirut for Vanity Fair that Vanity Fair didn't want to publish, because they said I was making fun of death... This was Tina Brown.But they paid me for it. So I've got this big chunk of a piece, and Rolling Stone liked it, but they thought it was a little dated. But then they called me back and asked me to do a similar piece about the Turks and Caicos Islands, where the whole government had been arrested for dope smuggling. That was fun.”

PeopleWantLittlesSaidDoneWholeBigsGovernmentFunKnownGonePiecesFairsStonesPaidVanityIslandsBrownRollingThey SaidPublishArrestedDopeRolling StonesChunksBeirutVanity FairSmuggling
Author:P. J. O'Rourke
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“When [George W.] Bush was elected, I think they thought I would have some sort of special "in" with that administration, to provide some sort of inside poop. Which is not something I'd be interested in doing, and anyway, I didn't. I actually knew more people in his dad's administration. So it was obviously winding down at Rolling Stone, and they were having financial troubles, too. They weren't getting the advertising, and the issues were getting thin. They fired Bob Love, who'd been my editor there for a long time.”

PeopleThinkingLongIssuesTroubleSpecialDadLong TimeStonesFinancialAdvertisingAdministrationEditorsBobRollingRolling StonesPoopWinding Down
Author:P. J. O'Rourke
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“[Wave of bestselling conservative commentators] it's kind of like reading The Power Of Positive Thinking, or any other advice or how-to book. All they do is reassure people of their basic opinions, and then they can continue to act like they've always acted. I'd say it's time to move on to something else, but I don't know what it would be.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsKindBookWould BeMovingReadingOpinionAdvicePositive ThinkingWaveConservativeCommentatorsPower Of Positive ThinkingTime To Move On
Author:P. J. O'Rourke
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“Bob Wallace was my editor at Rolling Stone when I first started writing there, and he's a wonderful editor. I was in the Philippines during the Marcos overthrow, and I was up on what was called Smokey Mountain. I think it's gone now, but it was a garbage dump with a bunch of people living on it. I was talking to Bob on the phone, and I told him, "I'm a humorist. I can't write about this." And Bob told me to let my style be dictated by the subject, to take what I saw and write about it in the tone that it requires.”

PeopleThinkingWritingFirstsI CanTalkingGoneSawsWonderfulSubjectsStyleMountainStonesPhonesBunchToneEditorsBobRollingGarbageLiving OnDumpRolling StonesPhilippinesHumoristsMarcos
Author:P. J. O'Rourke
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“I've never been able to get it straight about what these people who are worried about the trade deficit are worried about. When they say that we're buying too much from overseas, that we're sending too many dollars overseas to get all these goods and services they got, they're saying that the American dollar is too strong and that is hurting our economy. And the result of this will be that the American dollar will get too weak, and that will hurt our economy.”

PeopleAbleStrongHurtResultsEconomyToo MuchWeakTradeDollarsWorriedBuyingGoodsDeficitGoods And Services
Author:P. J. O'Rourke
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“As long as we are on firm moral ground, as long as we're caring about other people, these are legitimate worries. The minute that we start protecting our own interests in the name of these worries and saying, "Oh, we have to make sure that only Ford Motor Company manufactures cars, because we can't be sure that the cars in other countries are being made quite up to our point of view," we're economically off base, and, of course, we're moral hypocrites, too.”

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Author:P. J. O'Rourke
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“Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.”

PeopleIfsShouldProblemCausesLibertyTroubleSocietyIgnoranceSourceDrugTestsAnd LoveFundamentalsDrinkingAddictionGreedIllStupidityLibertarianAlcoholAlcoholicsCocaineStupid PeopleDopeWar On DrugsDrugs And AlcoholDrinking AlcoholFunny AlcoholAlcohol DrinkingDrinking FunnyIgnorant PeopleStupidity And IgnoranceContrary To Popular BeliefLust For PowerPeople StupidityDon't Drink Alcohol
Book:Give War a Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind's Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice, and Alcohol-Free Beer
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